August 16th, 1984:
"Them? Who's them?" Asked Toby.
"The ones with the eyes." replied Gordon. "They're more dangerous than you think."
"What do you mean? Yesterday we saw Bill with the eyes and all he did was scare us." said Mavis.
"The same thing has happened across the entire island. Nobody knows what's going on." Gordon said. "I had to rush here. Neville was chasing me. I don't know where he is anymore."
"Well, as far as we know, they're fine." replied Arthur. "We clearly aren't hurt, and neither are you."
"You can say that, but they can hurt you!" answered Gordon.
The engines fell silent.
August 17th, 1984:
Arthur and Ben headed to Wellsworth. They needed to talk to Edward, and Ben didn't want to stay at the quarry anymore.
"So Ben, can you tell me about Bill?" asked Arthur.
"Well, Bill is my twin. We really like to pull jokes on engines. But I don't really feel in the mood now that he's like that." answered Ben.
"I see. Do you know Edward as well?" said Arthur.
"Edward is a really great friend of mine. We used to work down at the China Clay Pits before an accident happened. That's why I work at the quarry with Mavis." replied Ben.
At Wellsworth yards, many open wagons had the black eyes, some of which were chanting to bump engines off the rails. The rest of the trucks, however, were very frightened by them, and had fallen silent.
"What is going on, this is a very strange sight to see." commented Arthur.
"I don't know," replied Ben, "it's never looked like this before."
Just then, BoCo pulled up to the station. He had flatbeds of salvaged metal from the docks down at the end of the line. At the end of the train, was a very unhappy Salty.
"BoCo? Salty? What's going on?" asked Ben.
"Well y'see me hearties, Cranky has started acting strange." said Salty.
"Edward can't seem to figure out what's wrong with him. He's got strange black black eyes and he's being really quiet." replied BoCo.
"This all happened right after he got some diesel fuel this mornin. He hasn't been the same since." Salty whispered.
"Well, where are these parts going?" asked Arthur. "They don't seem to be any use."
"We're bringing them to Cronk for Murdoch to take to the Ironworks." He should be able to deliver them by the end of the night." said BoCo.
"Well ok, but what's happened to the trucks at the station?" questioned Ben.
"We don't know mateys. We just got here." replied Salty.
"Ok, well I guess we'll see you later then, we're heading down to see Edward to ask him a few things." said Arthur. "Have a good one."
As Arthur and Ben left the station, a few more trucks slowly died down with their chanting.
Sodor: Blacked Out
By MountainMadness08
Engines slowly start changing on the North Western Railway in the mid 1980's. More